The grounds of the mansion, the hillside—everywhere we look—is a wall of flame. Sparks arc onto the mansion’s smoldering roof. The back of the place is already on fire. All we have to do is wait for the scared dummies inside to decide they want to be dead dummies outside. The light from the flames is weirdly beautiful. It illuminates everything in a wavering, liquid pattern of reds and yellows.
A shadow streaks across the flickering light.
Hesediel’s armor rings out again. A hundred church bells clanging at once. Something slams her onto her back, leaving a deep, scorched dent in her breastplate. A few yards away Hadraniel drops lightly to the ground, the glare from her Gladius brighter than the blazing forest. She looks every bit as crazed as she did on the boulevard. Her angelic flesh is dry as sandpaper. Black lines ring her eyes. She’s so tweaked she can’t even hold her Gladius still. But it doesn’t make her look weak. It just reveals her true face, the grimace of a celestial berserker ready to burn down Heaven, God, and every mortal soul there ever was.
Hesediel rolls easily onto her feet. I start toward her, but she holds up a hand to stop me. Hadraniel looks from her to me, then back to Hesediel.
“Is this your new lord, sister? The Abomination? How desperate your God must be.”
“He’s still your father too, Hadraniel.”
Hadraniel looks at the sky.
“Not mine and not yours anymore. But you’re too sentimental to see it.”
“Better to have a heart than a twisted soul.”
“Better a twisted soul than no future.”
Hadraniel flicks her Gladius through the air. Ash and burning cinders fall on the angels’ armor. On their faces and hair.
“I know better than to ask you to come with me again,” says Hadraniel.
“It would be a waste of both our time.”
“So be it.”
I thought I was fast. Hell, I thought Arwan was fast. But with their wings outstretched, the charging angels are just a haze of fire and flashing armor.
They fight on the open ground in front of the mansion and in the burning forest. Swoop around each other above the flaming treetops. Their armor clangs and peals when they slam into each other. Shrieks when they glance off each other, metal sliding across metal.
It’s hard to tell the two apart. High in the air, one of them spins, catching the other flat across the back. Burning feathers explode into the air like skyrockets. The injured angel tries to stay aloft, but can’t. She weaves uncertainly, clearly groggy. Tucking in her wings, she dive-bombs just beneath the attacking angel’s killing blow.
She comes in low for a landing, but misjudges it. Hits the ground hard and slides across the road almost to the mansion door, tearing up tarmac, soil, and concrete. Hesediel staggers to her feet and takes a fighting stance but the armor on her back is burned open, like someone took a plasma torch to it. A lot of her hair is singed off and half of her face is black. But she doesn’t back down. Neither does Hadraniel.
She turns slow circles in the sky above us. Taking her time. Letting Hesediel’s injuries do their work, tiring and weakening her.
Hesediel stumbles. Catches herself. Her Gladius flickers.
Hadraniel swoops like a falcon in free fall, and batters Hesediel’s Gladius with her own, knocking her off balance. Hesediel staggers back a few steps. Her arms shake like the Gladius is suddenly too heavy to hold. I run through the falling embers to her. Bill fires shot after shot at Hadraniel, who doesn’t even bother to acknowledge them.
Hesediel is trying to stand when I get to her. I pull her to her feet. She pushes me away. Her speech is slurred, but I can understand her.
“Get away. This is not your fight.”
I manifest my Gladius and stand beside her.
She pushes me again.
“No,” she says. “No.”
Overhead, Hadraniel laughs at us.
“A lovers’ quarrel, is it?” she shouts, turning slow circles.
“Stark, please,” says Hesediel. “Let this go. Let me go.”
“I don’t leave friends behind.”
“If I’m your friend respect my wishes. Go.”
I hesitate for a moment, but I get it. I let my Gladius go out. Hesediel can’t even stand up straight anymore, but she manages to say, “Thank you.”
I want to give her my gun. My knife. My na’at. Something. But I know she won’t take any of them. So, I press the only thing she might take into her hand.
And walk away, leaving her there in the open ground.
Bill comes running over.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“It’s what she wants.”
“You’re going to stand there and let her die?”
“It’s her fight. She doesn’t want me.”
Bill looks up into the sky, sputters, “Shit and damnation.”
I take his arm and pull him away.
“We’re not going anywhere. If things go wrong, I’m perfectly happy to stab Hadraniel in the fucking back.”
When we’re clear, Hesediel manifests her Gladius again.
Hadraniel makes a couple of more turns in the sky. Then drops. I can barely see her.
When she hits Hesediel, she knocks her twenty feet, through the side of a van. Hesediel stumbles back into the open, but her Gladius is out. She takes a few steps. Collapses onto her back.
Hadraniel lands and lets her Gladius go out too. She takes a knife, like the one Hesediel used at Bill’s bar, from a sheath at her side. She doesn’t rush. She savors the moment. Yeah, she’s gloating, but she also wants to see if Hesediel is playing possum. It goes on like that, with Hadraniel circling Hesediel, for several more minutes. They talk, but I can’t hear them.
Finally, Hadraniel steps over Hesediel. Drops her full weight onto the other’s damaged armor. I can hear Hesediel moan all the way across the yard.
Hadraniel holds her knife so the fire dances off the blade.
“Are you watching, Abomination? I want you to see this.”
“Fuck you, Almira Gulch. You and me. We’re next.”
“Glorious. I so hoped you’d say that.”
She raises the knife and, in a blur, drives it through Hesediel’s breastplate. Holds it there while her sister screams.
Hadraniel leans back and looks over at me and Bill. Opens her arms, giddy at the kill.
Lowers her guard.
Hesediel’s arm moves. Just a few inches. Into a tiny space where Hadraniel’s armor has shifted, revealing a sliver of skin.
Hadraniel jumps up, pulling at her armor. Trying to get to where Hesediel hit her. She runs her hands over her skin. Looks at the palms and holds it up for us to see. No blood.
Hadraniel goes back to Hesediel and pulls out her knife. The blade breaks off in the armor. She throws the hilt into the dirt and walks our way.
She gets about ten paces before she falls over, choking.
Hesediel sits up, but can’t get to her feet. Bill and I run over. Get on either side and lift her up. When she’s standing on her own, she loosens the buckles on the sides of her armor, letting her ruined breast- and back-plates fall to the ground.
She puts a hand over her chest wound and comes back with only a little blood. She smiles at us through her burned face.
“It’s good armor,” she says. “And I’m a better actor.”
Bill and I help her over to Hadraniel, who’s tearing at the ground, trying to crawl away. Hesediel slips a foot under her sister’s belly and flips her over.
Hadraniel’s face is going from blue to black. She gasps for air. Clutches at her throat.
Hesediel unbuckles Hadraniel’s breastplate and pushes it away. Takes out her knife. Hadraniel is barely breathing. Her arms are limp. Hesediel bends and kisses her forehead.
She says, “Forgive me, sister.” And drives her blade into Hadraniel’s heart. The fallen angel lurches just once. Hesediel stands and slides the knife back in its sheath. When she looks again, Hadraniel is gone. Vanished like
all dead angels, good and bad alike.
Hesediel looks at me. Hands me the syringe with the raw, poisonous black blood I gave her earlier. I wasn’t sure she would use the thing.
I toss the syringe into the fire.
“Guess I interfered after I told you I wouldn’t. Sorry.”
“It was my choice. Black blood made Hadraniel what she was. It’s fitting it was her downfall.”
“You were her downfall. Not that rotgut,” says Bill. “In this world and the other, I never saw anyone fight like that.”
“I hope you never have to see it again.”
Me and Bill help her to one of the undamaged vans. We get her into the back, where she slumps against the seat.
The top floors of the mansion are roaring. A lot of panicked faces I recognize peer out of the windows on the bottom floor.
“Stay here with her,” I tell Bill.
“I’ll keep her safe.”
I get out my na’at and go into the burning house.
I COME OUT a few minutes later, alone. Except for Holly. That’s how Candy would have wanted it.
With the black blade, I start the only other undamaged van and leave it for her. She stands by the house and watches it burn like she’s expecting Norris, or Jesus, or Santa Claus to come out of the flames and make it all better. But no one does. After a while she gets in the van and puts it in gear.
Bill closes the door of our van and I turn us back to Hollywood, letting the mansion and hill burn itself to ashes behind us.
Hesediel dozes for a few minutes, then wakes with a start. She looks around the van, not sure where she is. When she sees Bill she relaxes back into the seat.
“Where are we going?” she says.
I look at her in the rearview.
“Back to Bill’s. Unless you want to stop for chicken and waffles.”
She stares back at the burning hillside for a minute.
“I have a thought. We have to go back to where Norris Quay took us.”
“What are you thinking?”
“Do you trust me?”
Something I never thought I’d say to an angel comes out of my mouth. “Of course.”
“Then drive.”
THE VAN SPUTTERS and coughs as we make our way back down Highland. Everyone is bone goddamn tired. It makes the drive feel even longer than before. Eventually, though, we cross the 105. I pull us up to the gates of the treatment plant and the van shudders to a stop.
Bill opens the side door and we help Hesediel out of the van. Back on flat ground, she can walk again, but she’s slow and moves with a bad limp. The skin is cracking under the burned part of her face so that the black is cut through with thin streaks of livid red.
We enter the plant and head to the treatment tank Quay took us to earlier. The place doesn’t smell any better on a second visit. She goes to the tank.
“Think of it. A whole war over this,” says Hesediel.
I walk up beside her.
“It’s going to go on for a lot longer, isn’t it? If all the bad guys fight like Hadraniel?”
“Forever, possibly.”
“Now there’s a pretty thought,” says Bill.
Hesediel turns back to us.
“But if we, now, could destroy the source of black milk, it would end sooner. Correct?”
I shrug.
“Of course. But like Quay said, we can’t exactly execute several million Hellions.”
“Maybe we don’t have to,” Hesediel says. “This is the source of black milk. We must destroy this.”
“But those Hellions are just going to keep shitting and shitting,” says Bill. “Destroying this batch won’t stop that.”
“I misspoke,” Hesediel says. “Everything all of us have done and seen and learned comes together here. Your return to Hell. Bill and Candy’s offer of help. The destruction of Wormwood down here. We have a chance. A single moment to destroy it all.”
She looks at me.
“And perhaps kill Wormwood in the mortal world. Without them, black milk will be useless.”
“But how do we do it?” says Bill. “You two incinerated the hell out of that forest back there, but I don’t think effluent even this vile will burn.”
“Not burning,” she says. “Befoulment.”
Hesediel takes a few steps away from the holding tank back toward the van.
“I’m glad I met you both,” she says. “I’ve defended mortals, but I never truly thought much of them, Bill. Thank you for opening my eyes.”
“Well, I think a lot more highly of angels ’cause of you. Thank you for that.”
She turns to me.
“And you. Abomination incarnate. I wasn’t pleased when Samael asked me to help you.”
“I can imagine.”
“But you’re a fine ally and companion.”
“Same to you.”
She looks past us into the distance.
“Who is that?” she says.
Bill and I turn. Find ourselves launched through the air all the way back to the van. Bill comes to a skid by the bumper. I crash into the windshield. Blood runs down my forehead into my eyes.
I try to get up, but my legs won’t hold me. The best I can do is crawl onto my hands and knees. Bill moans and rolls over, in as bad shape as I am.
I look around for Hesediel. Can feel a lump rising on the back of my head from where she hit me. Finally, I see her by the treatment tank. She has her knife out and is cutting a long slit from her wrist up to her elbow.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I yell.
She looks back at me, as happy as I’ve seen her.
“Saving us all,” she says.
I manage to get to my feet and stumble like a drunk to the gate of the plant.
Bill pulls himself up on the van’s bumper.
She holds her arm over the sewage.
“You said it yourself, Stark. My blood is the cure for disease. What is more pestilential than war?”
I push myself off the gate and head for her.
“Stop this shit. You’re in no shape for this.”
“But I am,” she says. “Clearheaded. Happy. I thought for so long that the war would consume us all. Now I can finally see its end.”
My head clears a little and I can stand upright.
“Let me help. Cut me too.”
She slices into her other arm.
“That’s noble, but clever as you are, this is something half an angel cannot do.”
Bill staggers up beside me. Pushes away and starts for her. I follow him.
Hesediel stands on the lip of the tank, her arms covered in flowing blood.
“Tell Samael thank you for opening my eyes to so much. Take care, my mortal. And my little monster.”
She draws the knife across her throat and falls backward into the tank.
Bill and I run to her. But we’re too slow. Too stupid. Too late.
She’s gone.
We get on our knees, scrabble around there like fools, waiting for her to bob to the surface safe and sound, her sacrifice just another ritual, and when it’s over, we can pull her out and take her home.
But she doesn’t come up. There’s no sign of her. Not even bubbles.
Bill and I stay there on the lip of the tank for a long time, breathing in the stink, neither of us wanting to move in case we’re wrong.
Finally he gets up. Taps me on the shoulder.
“Come on, son. It’s been a long day. I need a drink. So do you.”
It takes me a while to get my legs working.
What did I do wrong? What did I miss? Why did Samael send Hesediel to us? Did he know Hadraniel would break her heart? Did he know this is how it would end?
Is he that big a bastard?
“Please don’t be,” I say out loud like an idiot. “Please be as surprised as us.”
“What are you talking about?” says Bill.
“Nothing.”
We climb back in the van and I jam the black blade in the ignition
. The engine coughs a couple of times, but won’t turn over. We get out.
It’s a long walk back to Bill’s bar.
IT DOESN’T TAKE long to finish the bottle.
I wonder if Candy is through the maze yet. If she isn’t, if the Grays didn’t keep their part of the bargain, I’ll find them wherever they are. Part of me wants them to cheat. I’ve never wanted to hurt someone—anyone—more than I do right now.
When Abbot puts the Wormwood member list together, I’m getting it, even if I have to take it from him. I wouldn’t mind facing off with Willem. Which probably isn’t fair. In the larger scheme of things, he’s nothing. Not a good guy or bad guy. Of course, he doesn’t see it that way, but Willem isn’t a big-picture guy. Just another dog in the pack. Sit. Fetch. Bark. Bury a body if his master needs it. He’s the kind of guy who thinks he has a grip on good and evil because he made some big busts and got a few commendations. In the end, I don’t really want to fight him. I want to show him the locked doors of Heaven. All those damned souls and pitiful fallen angels stranded between the pearly gates and Hell’s scenic vistas. I want him to hear the rebel and righteous angels fighting it out for his future. I want him to know that the difference between salvation and damnation is small and getting smaller. Maybe he’d understand and maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe people like him and assholes like me are built to butt heads. But if an Abomination and an angel can get along for even a little while, who knows? I don’t want to be his friend, but it would be nice if just once, someone like him understood that I’m not his enemy.
Wormwood, on the other hand, is done. No one is innocent. No one walks away. No more clueless spouses. No more deals, car rides, or stories. No more dead kids.
I’m done with words.
They’re dead, every one of them. And when they’re in Hell, I’ll make it my job to send them to Tartarus. But not before they go for a nice, long swim in Quay’s sewage tank. Those fuckers want black milk? I’ll give them all they can choke down.
But not right now. Right now I picture Arwan and his crew carrying Candy through the sushi bar that leads to the maze.
Please make it home, Candy. I can’t lose you too. Allegra will fix you. She can fix anything. She’ll even fix Vidocq with what you’re carrying. Everyone is going to be all right. They have to be.